1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to improving image data processing in image data processing systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Image frames of motion pictures or video productions are traditionally captured on stock film and subsequently digitised for image editing professionals to edit such frames in post-production, for instance to blend computer-generated special effects image data therein, a function known to those skilled in the art as compositing. Modern developments in image capture technology have yielded advanced film stock, such as the well known 65 millimetres IMAX film, and digital cameras, wherein image frames captured by either have higher resolutions, thus capable of depicting their content with much more detail over a larger projection support.
Digitally-generated or digitised image frames have a resolution, or definition, expressed in picture screen elements also known as pixels, whereby said resolution amounts to the area defined by the height and width in pixels of such frames. For instance, motion picture frames exposed on 65 millimetres film stock comprise about 2048×1536 pixels once digitised for post-production purposes. Comparatively, video frames exposed on Super 16 millimetres film stock comprise about 1920 by 1080 pixels once digitised to the known 1080p High-Definition TV (HDTV) standard for broadcast.
Known image processing systems, such as Silicon Graphics Fuel™ or Octane2™ workstations manufactured by Silicon Graphics Inc of Mountain View, Calif., USA may be used to process both types of digitised frames respectively before the final theatre release or the broadcast thereof, and are typically limited to an optimum frame display size of about 1920×1200 pixels.
When considering the respective costs of image editors as highly skilled operatives and of image processing systems configured with image processing applications, which are non-trivial, trade-off situations are inevitable in that said systems may display said frames at higher resolutions than the original, but at the cost of decreasing both the rate of frame display and the data processing capacity of said workstations, thus slowing the output in terms of image data processed per unit of editing time of an image editing professional using such a system. Conversely, said systems may display said frames at lower resolutions than the original, but at the cost of decreasing the amount of detail observable by the image editor in the image frame, thus potentially introducing undesirable artefacts in said output. It is therefore desirable for the image editor to work with full-resolution image frames whenever possible.
However, image editing professionals using said image processing systems traditionally invoke the image data processing functions thereof by means of function-specific user-operable menus, known to those skilled in the art as widgets, within the graphical user interface (GUI) of an image processing application, which must also be displayed onto said VDU such that said professionals may accurately select the function appropriate for the task at hand. In this framework, comparing the increasing resolution of the above high-definition image frames with the maximum display resolution offered by current image processing systems highlights a growing problem, in that said GUI itself requires a substantial amount of the image frame displayable by said systems, whereby the portion of displayable image frame taken by said GUI is at the expense of the portion of displayable full-resolution image frame to be worked upon.